So I was looking thru some of my pictures from this spring and noticed these two birds, look at the one on the left! much darker tips than one on the right? And much darker than majority of birds we harvested this spring! Could this be an Eastern bird? This is Bosque County so unless a land owner imported his own Easterns I have no idea how he got here?

Had something similar happen on my ranch in San Saba county. Grandsons each harvested a nice gobbler (their first birds) so I had a fan mount done on both. As you can see, the one on the right is more Eastern looking and the other is definitely a Rio. Taxidermist swears the tail fans are matched to the actual birds killed. Talked with the Texas Game Biologist and had him scratching his head, lol!

Turkey's go through color phases sometimes as do other fowl, google it some interesting reads for sure

Awesome pics

All of the pics are Rios. I have killed many Rios with darker than usual fans. It's not that uncommon, especially in south Texas. Most of the Rios I have killed in north Texas however have had the usual light colored fans, but I have killed darker ones there too. Look at the secondary feathers on the fans. They are totally different from an Eastern.

Exactly...I've seen some Rios with very dark tail feathers and most that I've seen are usually in south Texas. I've seen some Rio's up in north TX on the grasslands that were trimmed in almost white like a Merriam's. And I have a Merriam's fan that's trimmed in buff more like a Rio. I've also seem Easterns with lighter trimmed tail feathers. As mentioned above there are some birds have different color variations than most of the general population.

I had a couple of dark fans like that that I've dismantled to use the feathers, but I have one that is still slightly darker than the rest. In this photo the fans on the left and right are rios and the top fan over them is an eastern. Notice the eastern is more chestnut reddish brown. I harvested an eastern this year with a fan somewhat darker than this but it still had a lot of reddish coloring in it...

Also, an eastern wouldn't do so well that far west...they need a certain type of environment and so much moisture to survive and reproduce. Same with a Rio...they wouldn't do so well in east Texas due to the more forested environment and too much moisture. That's why in early restoration attempts wild trapped Rios released in east TX did terribly and died out. There are a couple of areas where the populations overlap, mainly in Grayson county, but not many other places in the state.